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I had the most amazing experience today.

I’ve been feeding the birds on my patio for a few weeks now. Today, one flew into the window, knocking the wind out of its sails. I found it lying on its back breathing heavily.

I went outside and picked it up. It just sat there in the palm of my hand looking at me, occasionally closing its eyes. I tried to get it to fly, but it just wasn’t ready for that.

So I called my mom for advice — she’s really good with birds. She told me to protect it and put it someplace warm. So I found a box, lined it with washrags and put the bird inside. I covered the box with a cloth and put it on the counter in the kitchen. I heated up a lulu (a back of beads for applying heat to sore backs) and set that next to the box to keep it warm.

I checked in on the bird every once in awhile. After about two hours, it looked like it was feeling better — it peeped at me when I looked in on it and spread its wings.

I picked up the box and took it to the sliding glass door. I took the cloth off the box and opened the door. Without encouragement, the bird flew out of the box, across the street and toward a tree in a neighbor’s back yard.

That bird was so precious. And weighed next to nothing. And it would look at me as I held in with the same expression my dog does when I lay her on her back to groom her belly. It didn’t seem frightened. In fact, it almost looked like it was just going to trust me.

Mom said it probably just like the heat from hand. But I still like to think that, at least for a moment, I had a connection with a wild bird.

Back in my December 16, 2006, post, I mentioned that there were wild parrots here in SoCal. Well, this morning, as I took my dog for a walk to the post office to mail some letters, I was finally rewarded with the opportunity to take close ups of these guys. Here’s the photo gallery I made of the four shots I took. I hope you enjoy them.

I’ve really been noticing birds lately. Maybe its because they’re singing their little hearts out.

Photo taken by Robert Royse. www.roysephotos.com

The last several weeks, I’ve been watching woodpeckers in my neighborhood. They flit from palm tree to deciduous tree and back, occasionally pecking at the wood, but most of the time singing.

I didn’t know that woodpeckers had such a pretty song.

These guys are about the size of a bluejay and are all black except for some white and red on their heads. They are precious.
And speaking of precious, the other day I was sitting in my Explorer interviewing Damian Kindler (a writer on Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, and now working on his own creation, Sanctuary) when a little brown bird with a reddish head landed on the railing in front of my car and started singing.

I almost wanted to stop Damian from talking, but figured that would be rather unprofessional.

Anyway, the little guy sang for about a minute before the person in the car parked next to me opened the door and scared him away.

But it was a special moment while it lasted.

I don’t know what it is about Spring, but I always feel a sense of joy spread through me at this time of the year. I think it is the birds singing. They sound so happy that the joy spills over onto me and fills me up.

This morning, I was walking Sprocket the Amazing Weasel Dog around the block when I heard what sounded like children laughing … in the trees.

The sound came again. This time it sounded like a crow with too much trill.

I looked up at the almost completely denuded maple tree and saw three green-cheeked parrots sitting on the top-most branches. Another sat on a palm tree across the street.

It laughed.

One of the three in the maple laughed back.

Parrots.

In the wild.

In Southern California.

Who knew?

Apparently someone did. I found on the Internet the California Parrot Project, at natureali.org/parrot_project/Parrot_Project.html. It is a study of the “naturalization” of parrots into the wild “urban jungles” of Southern California. Imagine that.

This morning I was writing a review of “The Offspring,” an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, for SyFyPortal.com, which I regularly contribute to. In this episode Data creates a “child” who surpasses him in the ability to experience emotions and dies as a result. I cried when I first saw that episode, and I must admit that I got a lump in my throat writing about it, as well.

For some reason, this reminded me of something that happened shortly after I moved to Tampa, Fla., in 1999. The apartment complex we lived in had a small “lake” (more like a pond, if you ask me), which attracted quite a few ducks.

One weekend, as my husband and I left for ride to the beach, I saw a mated pair of mallards under a bush. The female was dead and the male kept trying to “wake her up” by lifting her neck with his beak.

It was the most poignant thing I had ever seen. That simple action conveyed such a strong emotion to me. I couldn’t stop crying for hours. Which, of course, pissed off my husband.

“It’s just a duck,” he’d say.

I tried to communicate that it wasn’t he death of a duck that moved me so. It was the grief and sorrow of its mate. Thinking about it now brings that all-familiar lump to my throat.

For days, I re-lived that moment. It broke my heart to think that this mallard would be alone for the rest of its life, for I was under the impression that ducks mate for life. Upon further research, however, I discovered that although that is pretty much the case, if a duck looses its mate, it can seek out a new one. That made me feel a little better.

My Diet Progress

I’ve been cheating big time — I just can’t seem to resist chocolate these days — but I’ve still been loosing, although very slowly.